Patients rights, safety and ethics

The development of the medical tourism, in case that the patients travel abroad for a plastic surgery, put in the question the base of the patient – doctor relation and endangers those who search the cheapest interventions.

‘We see cases of medical tourism where the tourism agents intermediate for their clients surgeries realized by doctors they have never met. The patients have not the safety […] that the surgeon who will operate them is adequately formed and qualified to execute the operation; often, too less attention is offered to the post – surgery cure’, says Catherine Foss, the Executive Director of the Plastic Surgery International Society (ISAPS)

The rate of the complications for the surgeries done in those conditions increased alarming, reality confirmed by some studies in US and Great Britain, where in some cases, the complications were so serious that the patients needed to go directly to the hospital when they went back. Consequently, of care for the safety of the patients shown by the President ISAPS that time, Dr. Nahai Foad (U.S.) and presented at the ISAPS Congress in 2010, it generated the concept of surgery in safety conditions based on 4 factors: the patient, the surgeon, the procedure and the clinic. The patient should be a good candidate for the operation, the surgeon has to be formed properly and accredited. The procedure has to be adequate for the patient and the clinic must be accredited, safe, with properly employees, prepared for emergency situations.

When the World Health Organization presented its initiative “The surgery practiced safely saves some lives” promoting the Verification List for the Operative Safety of the Patient www.who.int/patientsafety/safesurgery/en/, ISAPS was one of the organizations that sustained it since the beginning of the program, in Washington DC, on June 2008.

ISAPS is the biggest international society of surgeons promoting on one hand, the continue education of the surgeons in the most recent techniques in this domain, on the other hand, the safety of the patients. To be part of this organization, the surgeons obey a hard process of evaluation in order to certify their qualification.

Translated and adapted with the permission of the International Society of Plastic Esthetic Surgery